by Haylee Wilkie

 

She knew where to find him; she had enough of his destructive antics. She pulled her car around to the entrance of the shady dive bar her father had become to know as his home away from home. She sat in her warm car for just a moment rubbing her hands together and tapping her feet. She glanced down at the half-pack of cigarettes in the glove compartment. Her hand reached out, but she faltered for just a moment before shutting the console. She took a deep breath and opened her car door into the crisp autumn night. 

From the doorway to the bar, she could see his thin silhouette lurch forward after a tall, unsavory man knee him in the stomach. Neal coughed and let out a groan as the man left him cowering on the filth covered bar floor. Beth held her breath as she passed by the smoky interior and pulled him off his feet. She noticed his boots were vomit covered as she pushed him to the doorway and into the damp parking lot. She could see her breath as she slung him forward. He landed on asphalt and blooded his hands when he didn’t manage to catch himself. The goal was sobriety. He had lied again when he told her he wouldn’t come back to the bar; but they both knew it wouldn’t last. Under the fluorescent hum of the streetlamp, she noticed his left nostril caked in blood— either from the scarp, or from too much cocaine. 

It hadn’t always been this way; she had the picturesque family life once. She and her mom and dad were happy and stable in her childhood home. She remembered movie nights and home cooked meals. She remembered packed school lunches and a well-stocked wood stove. Her mom’s sickness came on fast. The cancer came out of remission, and it was only months until it was just Beth and her father. She remembered him begging for her mother to recover and watched him fall into himself when she didn’t. Afterwards, there was a newfound hollowness to his eyes. Something broke inside of him and the dark man came. 

With one arm slung over her shoulder, Beth hobbled along with Neal barely coherent. She wasn’t sure what concoction was in his system; he couldn’t quite talk to her past a slurred “hey Beth” when he registered who she was. He could walk with some assistance, but his legs wobbled and crossed onto one another. He reeked of alcohol and sweat but Beth had grown accustomed to the smell. He draped over her, pulling his weight that had gotten lighter over the years of drug use. Still, she nearly buckled under him just as she had for years. She let out a swear under her breath; the instructions were clear, no cars. She had to reach him on foot, heft of her father be damned. She just needed to get a little farther, pull him for just a bit longer, to at long last, reach her destination.

The dark man—that’s what he called his alter-ego, the one that would propel him to stay up all night and come home beaten, bloody, and once with a god-awful tattoo that said, “Mama Tried” but looked an awful lot like “Mama Fried.” The dark man was shady and sinful. This delinquent side of himself that had an insatiable thirst for mayhem. It started after her mother died, and caused him to be thrown from one prison, rehab center, and group therapy to the next. The doctors didn’t know what to make of it. They never knew how to characterize him; he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and borderline personality disorder. Hell, they’d even diagnosed him with multiple personality disorder before it was reclassified by the DSM-5. Her father found it entertaining, without an ounce of shame or confusion. Instead, he had a swelling sense of pride. He’d frequently say, “See? Even the best doctors can’t figure out your old man. I’m an enigma to the people.”  No one could quite put their finger on why he was the way that he was– outside of the grief that must have fractured his insides to the core. 

When the dark man came out to play, you never knew what you were going to get. He once bought three motorcycles in a row, claiming that one Harley Davidson just wasn’t enough. He blew through Beth’s college savings, then sold each motorcycle once he broke his back after a high-speed chase with the cops. He claimed he thought he could out-run them. Once, it was 2 acres and $100,000 worth of marijuana he grew all the while singing “Copperhead Road.” The DEA seized the property but miraculously couldn’t pin it down on Neal. Neal nearly bought himself a pair of night vision goggles to burn the property up to stick it to feds, but Beth convinced him that he shouldn’t, mostly because half of the plants were males and unyielding, so the crop wasn’t worth what the DEA were claiming. Beth assumed he left it alone since he wasn’t arrested that time. 

Neal’s antics eventually caught up to him but never in a real substantial way. He managed to only find brief prison sentences, and Neal was so damned charismatic that he found drug connections and security. He was never the king pin, but he made a fine enough jester that he wasn’t bothered. Within the last year, Neal moved into Beth’s home with she and her husband after he lost her childhood home. Neal told Beth it was probably a good thing his house was repossessed on account that he had an active meth lab in the basement and could have easily blown the whole place up. Beth didn’t find that nearly as funny as Neal did. No matter what Neal did, luck was on his side and always had someone to catch him when he fell. 

Beth didn’t like living with her dad. As much as she had loved him, he was her father after all, he was too unstable for her own good. Her husband had been patient with her. He came from a stable background and knew that she needed extra support, but it was a matter of time before his patience would wear thin. Neal was aggressively bearing down on them. Beth found herself waking in a cold sweat. She had a recurring nightmare of leeches covering her skin and crawling into her eyes. When she mentioned it to her father, he shrugged and said that dreams didn’t mean anything.

Beth’s pace had slowed. She pulled her father off of her shoulders to catch her breath. They were at a clearing on the side of the road. Cars whizzed past them, heightening Beth’s unease. At long last, she saw the Man in White. 

Neal losing the house wasn’t the final straw; Beth had grown accustomed to feeling on edge. She no longer viewed her body’s excess adrenaline as a betrayal, just a matter of life. His sorrows bled onto her, and if she was honest, she didn’t know where he ended, and she began. No, she could deal with him. In fact, she was extraordinarily good at dealing with him. Everyone else in their lives had fucked off. He was too heavy for them but if she was shouldering his weight, then she could deal with whatever misfortunes became of them. The final straw wasn’t the loss of his house, the drug use, or the pending criminal suits; the final straw was the small, barely there growing life presiding in her belly. Beth realized that if her dad were to drown her, it would drown the child she did not yet know. 

The Man in White walked closer to the pair. His bright clothing lit up with headlights passing by. He was wearing his Sunday best: white oxfords, ivory trousers, an ivory and black striped button up, a well-fitted ivory jacket, an ivory trilby, and a blood red tie. The Man in White, for as dashing as he was dressed, did not have a face that matched. His wrinkles sagged with deep pitted scars. He took off his glasses and wiped them with a similarly colored handkerchief. Beth held her breath; he smelled of decay.

“Care to spare a two-dollar bill?” The Man in White asked Beth. 

She nodded and pulled out a crumbled bill from her pocket. She was told this would bond their transaction.

“Is this him?” the Man in White gestured towards Neal. 

Beth nodded. Neal was sitting up-right into the grass, swaying ever so slightly.  He tilted his head upwards to get a good look at the Man in White. Beth heard Neal mutter something about a two-dollar bill under his breath.  The Man in White squatted down next to Neal. He held his face within his hands, as if inspecting a child with a mysterious stain on their face. The Man in White grunted.

“No deal.” The Man in White stated. 

“What?” Beth’s heart skipped a beat. This wasn’t part of the plan.

“No deal” said the Man in White. “I already have his soul.”  He continued to clean his glasses. 

“How is that possible?” She asked.

“Neal Brackett. If memory serves correct, he came to me after his wife died. He was terrified and asked to do anything to keep the pain at bay—and security that he would not die by his own hand.” 

Beth’s eyes widened. The dark man came after her mother died. She fell to her knees and cast her eyes on her father. Neal looked at her and smiled, clearly somewhere far away. She put her hands on her stomach. If he would not take him, she would fail them all: her husband, her newborn child, and her father. This weight was too much for her to carry. 

The Man in White looked at Beth with pity.

“Perhaps there is another way.” He said with an uncomfortable smile. It stretched too far across his face and revealed shattered and rotting teeth.  

Beth looked up at him with tears spilling down from her vacant eyes. Her throat was clinched, and she was afraid she might not be able to speak. 

“I already have his soul. I do not have his body.” 

Exasperated, Beth looked between the man in white and her father. She could try and justify her choice. She could have claimed that he wasn’t really living here and that dulling his pain meant never genuinely feeling. But ultimately, she knew she was choosing herself. 

“Please.” She begged the Man in White. 

The deal was done. Within moments Beth witnessed what only could be described by few.

The Man in White began to wither away. His skin poured into the street and was carried like sand by the wind. Neal, on the grass, began to stand. His vomit covered shoes turned to ivory and his work pants lost all pigment. The white suit crawled across his body until at last, Neal became the man in white. 

“Thank you kindly,” her father that was not her father said to her. 

On her knees, Beth saw in a final glance, The Dark Man, at last, wink at her one last time as he walked away.